Soot Happens

Name: Soot Happens
Author: J.E. Joyce

42 pages

Some messes can’t be fixed with duct tape. Maddie Weiz has tried.
Three years after her husband’s sudden death, Maddie is still running his family’s hardware store, living in the house they shared, and wondering when her life became one long memorial. Selling everything and returning to Boston might finally give her a fresh start—assuming she can convince Sleighbell Springs’ nosiest residents to let her leave.

Jordan Vale has other plans.
Sleighbell Springs’ soot-covered chimney sweep, part-time handyperson, and full-time professional disaster has known Maddie for years… and was her late-husbands best friend. When Maddie admits she has never felt like she truly belongs, Jordan proposes a challenge: give them one month to prove the town isn’t merely her late husband’s home. It’s hers, too.

Soon, Jordan’s campaign has Maddie painting, laughing, reconnecting with her art, and noticing entirely too much about the muscles beneath Jordan’s perpetually filthy flannels. Their comfortable friendship quickly becomes something hotter, and far more frightening, than either expected.

But Jordan can’t ask Maddie to put down roots while keeping one boot out the door. And Maddie must decide whether moving forward means abandoning the man she loved…or finally choosing the life still waiting for her.

Can a widow searching for a new beginning and a restless chimney sweep build a future together, or will everything between them go up in smoke?

SOOT HAPPENS is a funny, steamy sapphic small-town romance featuring friends-to-lovers, a bisexual widow, a masc nonbinary lesbian chimney sweep, emotional healing, found family, queer joy, and a hard-earned happily ever after set in the shared world of Sleighbell Springs

Start Reading Page List Review